Too Much Information

This article reviews organizing information—after gathering it in the first place—is the key to actually using it. In this web-linked, data-rich world, engineers, like other professionals, must organize for easy access both the growing amount of information they create during the course of their day and the information they need to do their jobs. Indexing and linking documents and other information sources is an important first step, but engineers also must have a way to organize the information so they can find it via an easy search. Concept maps can be used to collect a designer’s knowledge and cognitive skills not available to other designers. The concept map explains through a formal step-by-step visual representation how an engineer attacked a design problem, struggled with it, attacked it from another angle, and eventually solved it. The maps are archived in a database and can be referred to for help with similar problems.